May 04, 2005

Siliconbeat reports on Thefacebook 's $12 million raise. This in itself is big news, since the company is only 14 months old and that amount of money could seem disproportionate for its stage of maturity. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I just happened to have lunch with Matt Cohler, the VP of Corporate Development of Thefacebook. He was kind enough to share with me some numbers that I could blog, and to be honest, they are quite stunning. Ready ? Here they are:

Out of 1400 universities in the US, 640 have been launched.

In those universities, they have a 50 to 90 percent penetration

Total number of registered users: 2.6 million

Frequency of visits: 65% of the user base visits the site every day, 95% every month (!!!!)

Average number of visits per day: 6

Traffic: 3 billion page views from US registered users

The business model is advertising and sponsorships, and their focus is to provide a very useful directory and related features to the college kids demographics. Current advertisers of the site are Apple, Victoria Secrets, Paramount Pictures,... and there is more to come.

Oh yeah, and they are already making gazillions of dollars and are profitable.

So that $12M investment of Accel was not really necessary, but it helps stabilizing the company, gets Jim Breyer involved and makes everybody wonder about the valuation. Matt did not say anything but using the 20-30 rule (which says that a firm wants to own 20 to 30% of a company when investing alone), you get $40 to $60M. After 14 months.Update: AlwaysOn had hinted at $81M pre-, and from what I have heard since I wrote this post, it is either that or higher. Sheesh.

As I said, tip of the iceberg.

Another update: The NY Times has a long article about Accel's investment, also covering the history of the company.

March 22, 2005

No reason to hang onto Internet Explorer any longer: the other toolbar I was using most, beyond the Yahoo Companion, is now available to Firefox users! Two LinkedIn search addins can be downloaded here: one for profiles, and one for jobs - on Windows and MacOSX.

PS: Don't remove Internet Explorer from your system just yet. There are still a large number of sites that are not compatible with Firefox.

Last February KP's John Doerr, a Friendster investor and director (with an otherwise hyper-impressive track record - can't always be right in VC, it is part of the game), said that "said they would announce a partnership deal in February and reach profitability within the next 90 days". March saw the launch of Friendster Blogs, a while-labeled version of TypePad, which features a free entry level offering and the usual TypePad three-tier premium memberships. Both companies have done a good job at designing a compelling free service that might draw users away from blogger, but it is not clear how much conversion they will get. Then comes the Movie "deal". With ex-TV wunderkid Scott Sassa as CEO, this could be expected - that or a reality show. Hmmm....

Sustaining their audience in providing a rich and useful "value experience" is Friendster's challenge, one which MySpace seems to be executing on much better (comScore ranked it the 7th largest Web domain in page views, at 4.6B). Their core focus: music and entertainment, and a community of tens of thousands of bands and artists, attracting 9M unique visitors and 65,000 new daily registrations.

Social networking is now "just" part of the fabric of online services: LinkedIn focusing squarely on the job market, MySpace on music and entertainment, Tribe.net (reportedly raising their Series B) on classifieds,...

Update: SiliconBeat reports the launch of a Friendster classifieds web site in Manilla. Sounds like they will be trying to slice and dice their 15 million members in chunks that they can target and monetize through these kinds of products/services.

In the same vein, Plaxojustannounced the launch of additional premium services, aiming at tripling their user base to 15M and bringing their arpu from $1 to $2 (Bambi Francisco interview here).

March 01, 2005

Wrapping up my posts on this topic, CNET has announced that LinkedIn Jobs are now out of beta, and posting a job offer will be charged $95. This is an notch above the $75 that craigslist is charging in the Bay Area, and quite a bit below the fee of Monster and others on-line job services. Note that the web site refers to this pricing as "special introductory for 30 days" and that a 50% discount is offered on the first post. As I type this, over 50 paid job posts have been listed.

LinkedIn has also launched JobsInsider, a co-browser allowing job seekers to visualize how their LinkedIn network allow them to access a given company. In this example, I see how my network would help me reach people at Yahoo for this VP position. As the functionality increases of the co-browser increases, this might become quite useful.

This feature is IE-only for now, but I have made a plea to Eric Ly, LinkedIn's CTO, who I visited last week to get a preview of JobsInsider, to make this available on Firefox as well. As I told him, the only thing that I am missing on Firefox since switching (the very day the Yahoo toolbar became available) is the LinkedIn search.

February 04, 2005

Chris graces us with one of his extremely thoughtful pieces regarding the fabric of social networking/software: Dunbar Triage: Too Many Connections. This time he looks at the issue of maintaining relationships across multiple social networks and systems, especially in light of Dunbar's theory that 150 is the upper limit of efficient social networks. Chris offers shares views as to how such networks can be maintained, and filtered.

Because social media (which I loosely define as covering social networking, all forms of personal publications, syndication and aggregation) is my primary interest and focus, I have tried most services available. As I have blogged many times in the past, LinkedIn is the service that I have chosen to host my business network. I would say that at least 90% of the 600+ people I am connected to I have met in person, in a business or casual setting. The remaining 10% (or even less maybe) were added to my network before I implemented the rule Ross Mayfield taught me (by turning down my initial LinkedIn invitation) that social capital should be used essentially with connections from the "real" world, or with people who have been highly recommended by my "trusted inner circle".These "unknown" connections are only problematic when they are part of a forward/connection request, and, by virtue of the lack of a shared context, I can't make any representation when passing onto the next person in the chain.

As to the maintenance of the network, and how often one needs to get in touch with each individual, it is a matter of one's purpose for networking - or using a networking tool. As far as LinkedIn is concerned, the two most useful features are 1) finding out how I can access a given person or a company, and 2) identifying people matching a certain profile (like a last minute speaker for our conference). And it has also become an interesting source of business or investment leads, because I have made the choice of providing quite a bit of information in my Linked profile, and very often referring to it as my main bio.

The VC/startup industry is revolving around efficient networking, and I have always found that what mattered was to properly meet someone (doing the breakfast, lunch, coffee "thing") in order to introduce your fund/startup/practice, and then it was OK to do business without connecting in person for a couple of years. And there are enough (daily) schmoozing opportunities (VC functions, industry meetings, social events, conferences) to get caught up. That is, if you care attending them.

Because of the way I use LinkedIn, as an online proxy of my rolodex, I don't really need to apply one of the 3 management methods Chris is referring to. Quite the contrary, the larger my trusted network is, the more visibility I can have on ways to reach a given person/company - potentially having multiple paths to reach someone, and choosing the most relevant person in a given context.

January 16, 2005

As I hinted last Friday, LinkedIn Jobs is now available as a preview. Reid Hoffman has often mentioned that offering this feature was a natural extension of LinkedIn.

Like other job sites, you will be able to set search criteria regarding a position (except salary level ?) and access the list of available positions. Where social networking features kick in is in the display of your degree of connection on LinkedIn to the poster of the ad (1 if you are directly connected, 2 if one person connects you and the poster through the network, etc.) and how many people have endorsed that person on the service. The whole idea is obviously to use your personal network to due diligence the company, the team and the person hiring, as well as find ways to get to them through your connections.

The detailed view of a position also mentions how many people in your network work for that company, and whether the person posting and yourself have one or more LinkedIn Groups in common.

So who's hiring ? Obviously LinkedIn (which I recommend), but also Wondir, "which is building a new and different kind of information service to connect people who have information needs with the people and information that can help them". The person who posted the position is Allen Searls, Doc's son. Very cool concept.

Did I mention that posting jobs was free during the preview ? Definitely worth trying (10 jobs have been added since I began typing this post, and 360 within the first 4 hours). The combination of trusted referrals and due diligence, and what I would expect to be a competitive pricing (though I don't have any specific information), should make this service very relevant a number of positions.

This also hints at a source of revenues for LinkedIn, a question which has been floating around for a while. Charlene Li just added her insights on that very topic.

January 14, 2005

Oracle dropped the ax Friday, announcing plans to lay off 5,000 workers in its effort to squeeze costs out of its $10.3 billion software merger with PeopleSoft.

This is very sad for all people who will be impacted by this massive "rif" (reduction in force in startup speak), and we can only hope for them that they will find opportunities quickly. Best of luck to all of them.

I can only assume that Jeff Nolan, a partner with SAP Ventures, is going to be inundated by emails after posting yesterday that his portfolio companies are seeking talents that typical PeopleSoft ex-employees might have. And so will Brad Feld. On the startup side, Ross mentions opportunities at SocialText.

I would imagine that many in the 11,000-strong PeopleSoft workforce have been busy updating and posting their resumes, bios, blogs and have hit the road to participate to networking events.

Just as a data point: in my (reasonably large) LinkedIn network, I have access to 4,726 current PeopleSoft employees. Since I know that I can reach about 80% of all LinkedIn members, I guess that about 5,500 PeopleSoft employees must be in the database - that's 50% of the company (!!!). Not surprising that they have created a LinkedIn Group for the PeopleSoft Alumni Network.

Hmm, let's now look at how many have joined recently: 3,756 (of the 4,726) have joined in the last 3 months, 3,189 in the last month, 1,617 in the last two weeks and 951 in the last week. Which means that LinkedIn must have seen a massive spike in PeopleSoft registrations since Dec 13th (the day Oracle's "victory" was confirmed).

It has been a common question in the press as to LinkedIn's value and business model. Well, sounds like employers interested in attracting PeopleSoft talents should get busy on the site... or better post their job offers on LinkedIn. Being to post jobs directly on LinkedIn ? WTF ?

Well, here is the tip of the day: based on some emails that a few LinkedIn members have received yesterday, a preview of LinkedIn Jobs should be available on... MondaySunday.

I hope that this will generate a few success stories involving ex-PeopleSoft employees, and that we'll see appearing on the site like this one (or this one - shameless self promotion).

Private Message: Sorry Jean-Luc, but you might have to put some more servers up over the week-end :-).

Disclosure: I am not affiliated with LinkedIn, but as I mentioned in my previous post about the company, I have been a big fan for a while, and quite a few of my friends are involved in the company as executives or investors.

October 13, 2004

Another embargo is over: LinkedIn has announced this morning that they have raised $10M from Greylock, with participation from Sequoia - their sole Series A investor, and 14 individuals. Some names are familiar (Marc Andreesssen, Joe Kraus, Loic le Meur, Peter Thiel,...). David Sze, an extensive LinkedIn user and a great guy, will be representing Greylock on the Board.

I have been a big fan of LinkedIn for a while, and have personally extracted a lot of value from it, in several occasions. As I explain in the case study though, LinkedIn really works when you connect with people you know/have met/worked with in the past. Otherwise trusted referrals don't mean much. So don't get mad at me if I suggest that we meet first if you ask to connect to me on LinkedIn.

As to the Premium services, and how we'll get to pay for them, watch this space, I am sure that this will come at some point.